RIM co-CEOs step down as company reboots top leadership

RIM's co-CEOs have stepped down and will be replaced by the current COO, …

Blackberry vendor Research in Motion (RIM) is changing up its top leadership. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who have served jointly as the company's Chief Executive Officers, stepped down on Sunday evening. They have also given up their positions as co-chairmen of RIM's board of directors. RIM's Chief Operating Officer, Thorsten Heins, will take over as CEO.

RIM has seen its position in the smartphone market crumble over the past few years as rivals Apple and Google reshaped the mobile technology landscape. RIM has struggled to modernize its operating system and deliver competitive products. Although RIM acquired embedded systems vendor QNX in 2010 with the hope of improving Blackberry software, it has taken too long for the company to overhaul its mobile platform.

Rumors about leadership changes at RIM began circulating earlier this month. Former Royal Bank of Canada executive Barbara Stymiest has taken over as chairman, vindicating the reports which named her as the most likely candidate for that role. Lazaridis, who originally founded RIM and is said to be one of the wealthiest men in Canada, will become the vice-chairman. Balsillie will retain a seat on the board, but no leadership position.

Heins will face many challenges as the new CEO of a company in decline. RIM's prospects for restoring its relevance in the smartphone market are possibly weak, but the company has a robust patent portfolio that could make it a valuable acquisition target—especially in light of the current litigious climate that afflicts the mobile industry. Reports that emerged last week indicated that several companies, including Samsung and HTC, are in talks to acquire RIM. Samsung categorically denied interest in acquiring the company.

Heins took an optimistic tone in a video that RIM has posted on YouTube Sunday night, saying that he thinks RIM still has the potential to be one of the top three players in the smartphone industry. Heins says that he wants the company to boost its emphasis on prototyping and innovation while improving its relationship with consumers.

Having more good options is important. Simply having more options doesn't necessarily benefit anyone.

(Say what you will about Apple and Google, but they have proven to be vital competitors. Until they showed up, though, the existing competitors --namely RIM, Palm, Nokia, Sony, and Microsoft-- served more to hold the industry back than move it forward. Palm at least gave up on PalmOS and shifted gears, but Microsoft would have held steady with Windows Mobile had they not lost so many sales. Nokia threw in the towel, and RIM rested on their laurels. So here we are now...)

To have honestly had a shot, they needed do reboot 2 years ago when the Motorla Droid came out. And if the company ha that kind of foresight, they wouldn't be in this mess at all. So it's a real catch-22.

Whats sad is that in this mobile climate, the patents are probably worth more than the entire operation itself.

Research In Motion Ltd.’s new chief executive officer says the company is on the right course and does not need a change in strategy, and instead must focus on marketing as the company attempts to revive flagging BlackBerry sales.

"To have honestly had a shot, they needed do reboot 2 years ago when the Motorla Droid came out. "

They did, they bought QNX and started building BB OS10 /Playbook OS, they just have taken too long. Still have a shot at getting back in it, but have to execute way better.

"Yeah, they're still fucked."

Yeah, they still make hundreds of millions every quarter and grow subscribers, have no debt, and a solid tested next gen OS coming out, but your cogent statement is so much more convincing than the facts that I'll believe you Y3k-Bug. Nice contribution to the discussion!

RIM right now needs a leader with vision and one willing to change. Speaking with many people who have worked for RIM, it's a very political culture and it's hard to get things done ... very bureaucratic. Plus the company is strongly siloed with little fiefdoms around. Plus a lot of the senior leadership comes from the telecom industry - an industry not known for it's rapid, breakneck change.

I think that for RIM to bounce back, something fundamental is going to have to change.

"To have honestly had a shot, they needed do reboot 2 years ago when the Motorla Droid came out. "

They did, they bought QNX and started building BB OS10 /Playbook OS, they just have taken too long. Still have a shot at getting back in it, but have to execute way better.

"Yeah, they're still fucked."

Yeah, they still make hundreds of millions every quarter and grow subscribers, have no debt, and a solid tested next gen OS coming out, but your cogent statement is so much more convincing than the facts that I'll believe you Y3k-Bug. Nice contribution to the discussion!

Dude; you can have the greatest hardware/software/your mom/etc. in the world, but if you fail to execute you're still fucked.

A) RIM completely missed the "appeal to consumers" boat.B) RIM stopped actually listening to its core business customers ages ago.C) I can buy mobile device software from a dozen other companies that manages phones with multiple OSes.

RIM has nothing unique, they have terrible customer engagement and their marketing and design departments were chiselled out of stone tablets eleventeen squillion years ago in a bygone era.

I want to root for the home team as much as possible, but RIM could be doing consumers more good if Google/HTC/Samsung/[android vendor # 382] bought them for the patents.

Blackberry OS is dead. May it rest in peace. But it is critical to remember that those patents could be doing actual good to the world by providing protection for Android and ensuring that smartphones stay (at least!) a two-way race.

It’s time to put the flag-waving nationalism down and realise that we are a couple of bribed judges away from living in a world where the only smartphone choice is Apple.

Blackberry make a cute feature phone, but they made the same mistake as MS did with the Kin: they are pricing it to compete with real smartphones. But they aren’t real smartphones. They don’t have the ecosystem, they don’t have the functionality or the appeal. They don’t have the ease-of-use, the flexibility or even the form factor! (With one (very shitty) modern exception.)

It would be like crying that Windows Phone 7 was finally taken out back and shot. Who cares? Nokia can always make feature phones out of something else.

For RIM – or anyone else – to compete in the same arena as Apple and Google here will take more than hardware or software. It will take marketing, appeal, a developer ecosystem, app availability, configuration flexibility, communications integration and flexibility, carrier deals, and did I mention appeal?

RIM is doomed if it thinks the handset business is worth remaining in. It’s not. Jettison the relevant patents, make a truckload of money, close down the handset biz, focus on QNX R&D and licenceing as well as building the best mobile device management software in the business.

Or, hey…deorbit the Soyuz capsule RIM without firing the retro rockets. Plow her into Kazakhstan at full speed and dig yourself a new trench right alongside all the other arrogant twats who thought they knew better than their customers.

Right there you lost all credibility for the rest of your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? It's faster at surfing the web than the much lauded Windows 7.5 phone, faster than many dual core Android phones, smoother UI than most Android phones, over 50,000 apps available, best keyboards in the biz, NFC, mobile hotspot, fastest push email, BBM, and a choice of all major form factors and price points.

You may not like BB phones, but they're as advanced as any other phone on the market in real world use, despite not having dual cores.

Research In Motion Ltd.’s new chief executive officer says the company is on the right course and does not need a change in strategy, and instead must focus on marketing as the company attempts to revive flagging BlackBerry sales.

Yeah, they're still fucked.

Incredible. They just punted out the CEOs, but they still can't admit that they actually have a problem.

Looking forward to those TV spots featuring sexy celebrities emailing each other with physical keyboards. Neat-o.

Edit: Scrolled down and read the comment about an "innovation committee." RIM has transformed into a gigantic, living Dilbert cartoon.

Right there you lost all credibility for the rest of your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? It's faster at surfing the web than the much lauded Windows 7.5 phone, faster than many dual core Android phones, smoother UI than most Android phones, over 50,000 apps available, best keyboards in the biz, NFC, mobile hotspot, fastest push email, BBM, and a choice of all major form factors and price points.

You may not like BB phones, but they're as advanced as any other phone on the market in real world use, despite not having dual cores.

People like android because it has all the latest and greatest hardware, but really.. the OS runs like crap. It takes two to three times the hardware to run Android at the same speed as the others.

"People like android because it has all the latest and greatest hardware, but really.. the OS runs like crap. It takes two to three times the hardware to run Android at the same speed as the others."

Agreed, I'm always shocked when I use my friends Android phones and notice the lag...guess that's what you get when you're running a dated Java virtual machine OS instead of native one like BB, WP, or iOS. Not that the newer Android phones aren't smooth, but it takes a lot more horsepower it seems to get them to match the competition in everyday smoothness.

I'm still not sold a Canadian company can create something hip and innovative for the general consumer.

They should redouble their efforts on the business end, try and create a killer app to go along with BBM that makes the iPhone seem silly for enterprise.

Or put BBM on iOS, Android, WP7, W8, XBox 360 Dash... and become an enterprise software service company, creating communication, collaboration and logisitics applications run on servers deployed on site.

It's probably too late to change captains aboard The Titanic after you've hit the iceberg and the ship is listing in the water.

I was thinking of the "shuffling of the deck chairs" Titanic analogy. Because, really, that's all they've done. Moved people around in the organization, without really bringing anyone new in to shake things up. About the only people who think this is any kind of a significant change are people like Zinger, who view rapidly decreasing profits as a good thing, as long as they're still profits, and can still be convinced that RIM can still catch the boat, despite the fact that it left 2 years ago.

It is sad to see for me. They should have toughed it out. They need to find a way to put out the new operating system, all the changes that happen will put someone new in and will mix things up the way new CEO's love to do that will push back timetables more. Sad reality that boards are more fear driven and their anxiety and their need to do something overcame rational thought.

Build it in pieces and ship out parts of it with the current OS that improves the experience, bolt on the kernel later. Everything has to be perfect makes it take too long. Waiting for the opportune moment made them loose too much time. To me marks the end, not a new beginning. New CEO's love to sell, offshore, short term things until things becomes unsustainable.

Or put BBM on iOS, Android, WP7, W8, XBox 360 Dash... and become an enterprise software service company, creating communication, collaboration and logisitics applications run on servers deployed on site.

Huh, not a bad idea really. Keep what they are strong at, and dump what's dragging them down.

Right there you lost all credibility for the rest of your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? It's faster at surfing the web than the much lauded Windows 7.5 phone, faster than many dual core Android phones, smoother UI than most Android phones, over 50,000 apps available

And right there you lost all credibility for your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? What sort of credible smartphone needs a reboot to uninstall an App? Who would look at 50 apps let alone 50,000 in that clunky appstore?

The web browser on the touchscreen phone has a mouse cursor! There are so many unpolished interactions between the touchpad/cursor/web page/browser UI that actually using it on a daily basis is infuriating.

They should have been ashamed to release OS7 like that with competition like iOS.

I upgraded it over the air recently. ~34Mb download and install. It took 4.5 hours.

Quote:

You may not like BB phones, but they're as advanced as any other phone on the market in real world use

They're as advanced as any other smartphone on a spec sheet, in real world use they're a keyboard and email with some badly done bolt-ons.

I own an android phone and can't agree more about the lagging part. My 1GHz phone upgraded to Gingerbread a few months ago and the thing runs about 30% slower. Does it do anything substantially different than Froyo? Possibly, but how could it cause the phone to lag so much? And then there's the bugs, unpredictable battery life, and little to no software updates to fix bugs. My Kindle Fire, while still on android, has been updated more times in its lifetime than my phone, which has been out since 2010. The only reason I haven't jumped ship is because of Google Maps.

Right there you lost all credibility for the rest of your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? It's faster at surfing the web than the much lauded Windows 7.5 phone, faster than many dual core Android phones, smoother UI than most Android phones, over 50,000 apps available, best keyboards in the biz, NFC, mobile hotspot, fastest push email, BBM, and a choice of all major form factors and price points.

You may not like BB phones, but they're as advanced as any other phone on the market in real world use, despite not having dual cores.

As a matter of fact, I have to support a dozen of the damned things in the field. Every single user loathes them. I was supporting 350 of them two weeks ago. Then we announced that the company would now support Android and iOS and every single person not on vacation bought brand new phones out of their own pocket rather than continue to use handhelds by RIM. Now yes, some of these were Bold 9700s. Some were even Storm 2s. But the vast majority were Bold 9900s or the new latest-greatest Torches.

A great many people fucking loathe the stupid things.

Holding them up against Windows Phone 7 is no great banner to wave. WP7 is a steaming pile of shit too. (Yeah, I have two clients that tried to foist WP7 handsets on the populace. Massive revolt – including multiple employees who quit – resulted in a very quick turn around on those policies.)

As to “smoother UI, faster surfing” or any other nerdly things you want to level at “most android phones,” you’re off in la-la-land.

Most Android phones aren’t smartphones. They’re feature phones. With crippled UIs and shitty hardware to back it up. They don’t come with much in the way of apps and they they won’t be able to access/run most of the good apps on the Market due to ass-tastic hardware.

The latest, greatest Blackberries are barely a match for my ancient HTC desire. And that thing was chisled out of a stone tablet way back in the beforetime. It is probably more accurate to say that Blackberries are competing against the HTC Hero, HTC Dream and HTC Desire Z.

These aren’t smartphones. Any of them. They’re feature phones. The fact that you can’t see this is exactly why RIM lost. It’s the same attitude. The one where your first reaction to this post is to jump up and say “that’s not what feature phone means.” Where you go get a link from the past to support your argument and belabour semantics instead of looking at the market and realising that “smartphone” has come to mean “flagship phone.”

And that people just aren’t willing to pay the money to get a blackberry in a flagship price bracket. Nobody but the diehard fans consider blackberry to even be competing in the same space.

Indeed, you’ve obviously been butthurt about this a few time, bringing up dual cores without my ever having said it.

Too bad.

Nobody is willing to pay $750 for a piece of shit blackberry. But at $99, they with no contract they might consider it. That makes it a feature phone. No matter how many features it has.

But damned if people aren’t willing to pay $750 to get away from their blackberries.

Research In Motion Ltd.’s new chief executive officer says the company is on the right course and does not need a change in strategy, and instead must focus on marketing as the company attempts to revive flagging BlackBerry sales.

Right there you lost all credibility for the rest of your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? It's faster at surfing the web than the much lauded Windows 7.5 phone, faster than many dual core Android phones, smoother UI than most Android phones, over 50,000 apps available, best keyboards in the biz, NFC, mobile hotspot, fastest push email, BBM, and a choice of all major form factors and price points.

You may not like BB phones, but they're as advanced as any other phone on the market in real world use, despite not having dual cores.

Research In Motion Ltd.’s new chief executive officer says the company is on the right course and does not need a change in strategy, and instead must focus on marketing as the company attempts to revive flagging BlackBerry sales.

Their value is in mobile management, not hardware. They need to license their patents and technology and stop fighting. BES is heavily deployed and supported in enterprise environments. If I could hook up an iPhone natively to my BES servers, I would dump blackberry in a heart beat. Blackberry still, not for long, has the best management and secure mobile platform fit for government and business. They need to leverage that ASAP before it is worthless.

The rot really started with the BlackBerry Storm - lauded to the skies as one of the first 'iPhone killers', it was a huge pile of poo that BB's smartphone credibility never really recovered from.

Meanwhile it's BlackBerry Messenger that is the sole reason for the company's increase in subscribers - and these are not high-flying executives with money to burn, but cheapskate kids who want to message for free (and coordinate riots).

So RIM is caught between two utterly different demographics - BBMing kids and emailing businessmen - and it's very hard to see how it will progress without abandoning one of them...

Their value is in mobile management, not hardware. They need to license their patents and technology and stop fighting. BES is heavily deployed and supported in enterprise environments. If I could hook up an iPhone natively to my BES servers, I would dump blackberry in a heart beat. Blackberry still, not for long, has the best management and secure mobile platform fit for government and business. They need to leverage that ASAP before it is worthless.

Hmmm.... Remember a certain BB blackout a few months back? Corporations will forgive one glitch, but if it happens again...

For a "steaming pile" wp7 sure does have a very high satisfaction rate, accelerating developer interest, and increasingly high carrier and press profile. I think you wanted to get your own dig in there, despite the lack of facts. As for the rest, I agree.

Having more good options is important. Simply having more options doesn't necessarily benefit anyone.

(Say what you will about Apple and Google, but they have proven to be vital competitors. Until they showed up, though, the existing competitors --namely RIM, Palm, Nokia, Sony, and Microsoft-- served more to hold the industry back than move it forward. Palm at least gave up on PalmOS and shifted gears, but Microsoft would have held steady with Windows Mobile had they not lost so many sales. Nokia threw in the towel, and RIM rested on their laurels. So here we are now...)

I'm sorry, but that really does seem VERY fanboy/girlish. Neither, you or I, or anyone else actually would know what would have happened if Google and Apple (can you name anymore? You probably could if you tried) had not been as successful as they have been.

Sulis wrote:

So RIM is caught between two utterly different demographics - BBMing kids and emailing businessmen - and it's very hard to see how it will progress without abandoning one of them...

Right there you lost all credibility for the rest of your rant. Have you used a BB OS7 device? It's faster at surfing the web than the much lauded Windows 7.5 phone, faster than many dual core Android phones, smoother UI than most Android phones, over 50,000 apps available, best keyboards in the biz, NFC, mobile hotspot, fastest push email, BBM, and a choice of all major form factors and price points.

You may not like BB phones, but they're as advanced as any other phone on the market in real world use, despite not having dual cores.

I hate defending RIM (since I find blackberries as boring these days as they were exciting in days past) but you're absolutely right. BB's are perfectly decent smartphones, their ecosystem is probably still bigger than Microsoft's and their usability/workflow and functionality are fine.

In fact their OS workflow was better than many smartphones, albeit within their limits, where they lose a lot of points. Caveat emptor: I have not used a BB in 2 years, so I don't know what they're like now.

Are they behind the times? Sure. But calling them feature phones shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the mobile market.

famousringo wrote:

Incredible. They just punted out the CEOs, but they still can't admit that they actually have a problem.

Looking forward to those TV spots featuring sexy celebrities emailing each other with physical keyboards. Neat-o.

Edit: Scrolled down and read the comment about an "innovation committee." RIM has transformed into a gigantic, living Dilbert cartoon.

This on the other hand is true - RIM seems to be still in denial about their fundamental failure - creating an innovation committee is definitive sign the company cannot and will not innovate.

Hint: it's not done by committee - its done by everyone when you set the right direction.

Their value is in mobile management, not hardware. They need to license their patents and technology and stop fighting. BES is heavily deployed and supported in enterprise environments. If I could hook up an iPhone natively to my BES servers, I would dump blackberry in a heart beat. Blackberry still, not for long, has the best management and secure mobile platform fit for government and business. They need to leverage that ASAP before it is worthless.

That's exactly right. Right now their best bet would be to make BES compatible with iPhone, Android and WP7 enabling admins to control all the user devices better than they can now. This could be done via releasing BB software for each platform, and working with device manufacturers as well.

Their focus on the failing handset business is risking wholesale destruction of their true company value.